Monday, January 25, 2010

I've been having a lot of weird dreams lately. Last night I had one in which author L. Sprague de Camp -- looking more or less like this -- showed up on my doorstep and invited himself to dinner at my house. Despite the abruptness of his arrival, he proved a very charming guest, regaling me with lots of fascinating anecdotes about other science fiction and fantasy authors. Throughout it, though, he was clearly trying to steer me toward talking about my opinion of Robert E. Howard and the Conan pastiches he and Lin Carter wrote. Not wanting to upset him -- why I'm not sure; perhaps I just wanted to be a polite host -- I deftly avoided his verbal snares and kept the conversation on other topics, including De Camp's own writings, which seemed to please him.

In the interests of providing an alternative point of view from the other comments here, I personally place great store in dreams as a rule.

If I had such a "significant" dream, I would not discount it out-of-hand. I will doubtless appear as a foolish old man seeing an omen in every croaking of a crow (which, for the record, I do not), but I would encourage you to be open to the idea that you had a genuine visitation.

What an awesome dream. I corresponded with both de Camp (I sent him nerdy errata from the first edition of his Lovecraft biography) and Carter. It was ages ago, but I recall dreams of this sort plagued my teenage years.

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